Norway plans to sell only electric and hybrid vehicles by 2025

Norway’s electric car market is growing rapidly. While only 2% of car sales in 2002 were EVs, that number has risen to 22% in 2015 and is continuing to grow. That jump makes Norway’s goal of selling purely electric vehicles by 2025 seem a little less ambitious. Because of this growth, Norway has created a program to ramp up the number of charging stations around the country. This should make driving an electric car a more viable option while also solving some of the range anxiety that could be making potential customers reluctant to make the switch to full electric. The program hopes to place a charging station every 31 miles, across all major roadways in Norway.

The incentives for buying an electric vehicle in Norway reveal why the electric car market has had such success. There is no VAT or purchase tax for EVs sold within Norway, there is free parking, access to bus lanes, no road tolls, and no ferry tolls. Originally, these incentives only applied to the first 50,000 EV customers. In order to kick-start the market Norway decided to give these perks to all customers; until now. Unfortunately, those incentives are beginning to be phased out. Access to free parking and bus lanes will be left up to individual cities, and purchase and VAT taxes will once again make an appearance–although, at a cost still lower than a conventional gasoline or diesel car. Road tolls will once again apply. However, they will be based on CO2 and NOx emissions produced by the vehicle. This all starts in 2018, but Norway will continue to revise these incentives into 2025.

Whether or not Norway is able to keep up the pace and sell only electric vehicles by 2025 will surely be interesting, especially when taking into account these changing incentives. If you would like to read more about Norway’s EV policy, you can find additional information here.